Embellished with exquisite skill, the white linen kaftan – thickly encrusted with white beads, white embroidery, white buttons and white sequins – is so beautiful, you could get married in it. Breathing faster, I bid a “merci beaucoup et bonsoir, m’sieur” to the sales assistant – preoccupied, in a somewhat OCD manner, with minutely adjusting the hangers so they all lie four-fingers’-width apart – and step back into the balmy darkness of Rue des Anciens Marrakchis. It doesn’t do to buy the first thing you look at. Particularly when it costs 7,450 Moroccan dirhams (Mad; Dh3,276). But how often, these days, I wonder, as I hail a taxi to go back to my hotel, does one’s pulse quicken in a shop?
Prices are no longer the faint-making bargain they were 10 or 15 years ago. Crucially, though, Moroccan craftsmanship – rivalled only by India’s – still flourishes. And with foreign fashion and interior designers harnessing those old skills and a new generation of Moroccan designers attuned to sophisticated foreign sensibilities, luxury shopping in Marrakech is better now than it’s ever been.
There are two main areas to investigate. The 1,000-year-old medina in the heart of the old walled city, off the famous Djemaa el-Fna square, now a Unesco World Heritage Site, is where you wander through endless grimy, old covered alleyways lined with stalls selling identical traditional items (guys, guys, why not diversify?) for which you’re expected to bargain. Among the zillion displays of yellow babouche leather slippers (from Mad50, Dh22), coloured ceramic tajine pots, pierced-metal lanterns, painted tea glasses, carved wood boxes, cotton kaftans, Berber costume jewellery and decorated baskets, are a handful of shops worth seeing, some of which export everywhere from Saint-Tropez to Tokyo. Still, after a session amid these chaotic alleys, most shoppers will arrive in relief to the calm, tree-lined streets of the new town, or Guéliz, built by the French during their rule here, where expat-owned shops sell mostly French- or English-designed, Moroccan-made clothing, bags, shoes and jewellery. Prices tend to be high, reflecting local rents, but fixed. A third shopping area, Sidi Ghanem, the industrial zone, is home to the factories or designer ateliers behind many of these shops. Most can be visited only by appointment, however, and are geared to wholesale buyers rather than individual shoppers.
WHERE TO SHOP
Medina The rule, says my guide, Ali, is that your opening bid should be half of what you’re prepared to pay. And the magic words, “Hmm, well, maybe I’ll come back later”, nicely speed up proceedings. I pause by a display of the gold-sequinned market baskets I know my teenage daughters would like. “Only 45 dirham [Dh20],” smiles the vendor encouragingly.
“You will pay 25 dirham [Dh11] if you want it,” murmurs Ali, without breaking step. Prices are more or less fixed in the shops, though. White muslin curtains swish in the breeze outside Cherkaoui, at 120 Mouassine (00 212 5 2442 6817), from whose cavernous depths – packed with top-quality lanterns, wall lights, lamps, carved tables and chairs and elaborately decorated oversized tagine dishes – the French interior designer Jacques Garcia, who revamped La Mamounia, sourced the 1,200 red glass lamps with which he has lit the hotel so enticingly. Lanterns cost from Mad1,800 to over Mad4,500 (Dh789 to Dh1,975). Style Berbere (00 212 6 6478 6378), where a jeweller works in a tiny workshop from 9am to 6pm each day, adapting any of the thousands of pieces to individual requirements, is excellent for inexpensive costume jewellery – around Mad150 (Dh65) for an agate necklace – using real stones. And Souk Cherifia on the first floor, under the Terrasse des Épices roof restaurant, is a mandatory stop on any shopper’s itinerary, thanks largely to the celebrated French shopping consultant Laetitia Trouillet. Having made her name taking Sarah Jessica Parker around Marrakech, Trouillet now consults for five-star hotels and has her own store, Lalla, here (www.shop-lalla.com, 00 212 5 2438 3685). Shop here for soft slouchy leather bags for Mad990 (Dh435), red kilim clutches or make-up bags for Mad380 (Dh165) and Mad750 (Dh330) – they sell for twice that on the American site Latitude – and leopard-print pony-skin pochettes for Mad750 (Dh330) and light velvet rug bags for Mad1,200 (Dh 525) – all instantly desirable. On the same level, Sissi Morocco has chic, cleverly printed cushion covers for Mad350 (Dh155). Art C is a tiny shop with vivid multicoloured next-big-thing clutches made from kilim rugs at Mad350 (Dh155) that Anthropology in London sells at £160 (Dh940), and La Maison Bahira (www.maison-bahira.com, 00 212 5244 26609), has top-quality towels for between Mad480 and Mad900 (Dh210 to Dh400), 400-thread-count Egyptian-cotton nightdresses at Mad1,090 (Dh480), and ankle-length cotton dressing gowns at Mad1,300 (Dh572), all edged in delicate, red blanket stitch. No bargain, but very beautiful.
If you have any energy left, know that Al Matjar sells lovely Berber rugs, BelAge costume jewellery, Khail Art Gallery top-end antiques, Atelier Moro beach wraps, elegant cushions and delicate necklaces, and the new Maktoub by Max & Jean more clothes and bags and cushions from local designers. Open daily from 10am to 7pm, except for Friday afternoons, the medina will see you emerge exhausted into Djemaa el-Fna, where, by night, flaring torches illuminate the darkness and crowds gather around the snake charmers and fire-eaters. Above Le Maitre Parfumier (big sign; you can’t miss it), the roof terrace of the Cafe Glacier has the best views of all this, so is the place to order a revivifying mint tea.
Ville Nouvelle The 1920s-inspired Grand Café de la Poste – all potted palms and whirling fans with a very good French menu – makes a good place from which to plan a sortie. The shoe shop Atika at 34 Rue de la Liberte (www.atikaboutique.com, 00 212 5 2443 6409) has developed a cult following and, although its prices are not low, its raffia ballerina flats at Mad990 (Dh435) and copies of Tod’s suede slip-ons in every colour from Hermès orange and baby pink to navy and emerald, at Mad750 (Dh330), are worth checking.
Around the corner, on Rue des Anciens Marrakchis, Michèle Baconnier has velvet collarless coats with diamanté buttons for Mad3,500 (Dh1,535), embroidered cushion covers for Mad300 (Dh133), and soft shartoosh wraps for Mad4,500 (Dh1,975), about a third of what US and European department stores sell them at. Almost next door, Moor by Akbar Delights is arguably the most inviting high-end boutique in the city (00 212 5 2445 8274). Exquisitely embroidered clutch bags, cushion covers, rugs, coats and the most beautiful kaftans you’ll find anywhere, cut narrow and hip-length or thigh-length, including the white-on-white one drooled over before; it’s all intensely desirable and equally expensive.
A short taxi ride away (say Mad50, Dh22) is the store to choose if you have time to visit only a single shop in the city. Opened three years ago “to stop the street becoming just another souq”, in the words of the Egyptian owner, 33 Rue Majorelle (00 212 5 2431 4195) stands across the street from the much-visited Yves Saint Laurent-designed Majorelle gardens (Mad50, Dh22 entry). A concept store, it showcases the works of over 90 designers, almost all Moroccan or locally living expats. Lud31’s clear plastic-covered clutches cost Mad145 to Mad420 (Dh63 to Dh185), Bladi Design’s tasselled, vivid ceramic teapots Mad265 (Dh115), M’Tita Bamako’s gold holdalls Mad2,450 (Dh1,075), Chez Monsieur Michelin’s upcycling bags made from recycled tyres Mad380 (Dh167) – there’s little here that wouldn’t make for an excellent present. The latest arrival is the new label Chabi Chic, with shiny limestone, unchippable beakers with stencil-like decoration, in sets of four for Mad299 (Dh130), and black-and-white stripy casserole dishes for Mad199 (Dh 88).
Opposite, Heritage Berbere (www.heritageberbere.com, 00 212 5 2430 8841) sells enticing candles and perfumes scented with cinnamon, ginger, flowers and herbs for between Mad630 and Mad790 (Dh277 and Dh347). The courtyard cafe in the Jardin Majorelle gardens provides a shady if expensive spot in which to gloat over your purchases.
Where to stay
Thump, trip, ouch. This is the sound of someone getting up in the middle of the night at the Royal Mansour. Morocco’s contender for the title of most beautiful hotel in the world, is a place of astonishing attention to detail, whether it’s a mosaic’d zellij wall, the carved cedar-wood ceiling or massive pierced lanterns, but the bedrooms in the 53 super-private riads here are not overlarge for the amount of furniture worked into them, and the lighting system is one of those touch-screen devices that has you feeling your way along the wall in the dark and tripping over the bench at the end of the bed as you hunt for the screen. But that is a minor quibble. You’re staying in a museum, after all, a showcase of craftsmanship that is incredible to see in the 21st century. The staff are charming (if bored; this is hardly the busiest hotel), beds and bed linen sumptuously comfortable, the restaurants beyond beautiful, and the food quite sublime, which is why it’s so worth coming for lunch or dinner if you don’t stay. It’s directed by the three-Michelin-starred Yannick Alléno from Le Meurice in Paris. I especially enjoyed the canapés at dinner, the library of cakes (seeing is believing), and breakfast in the open-air courtyard, full of birdsong and planted with ancient olive trees.
A five-minute drive away, similarly within the city walls, and opened in 1923 with 50 rooms, the now 209-room La Mamounia still oozes a sense of history and looks intensely glamorous following Jacques Garcia’s renovation. It has a wonderfully dark and alluring interior, with parchment-yellow lamps lighting velvet sofas and a pleasing imperfection in the handmade tilework that creates an appropriate impression of age. The bedrooms, however, are large and light-filled, reached via a passageway of carved wood and mosaics lit by pierced lanterns, most with a balcony overlooking the Murano-glass-tiled swimming pool and large gardens. There’s D Porthault linen on the beds and the most comfortable pillows I’ve ever slept on. The window between the bathroom and bedroom feels oddly invasive of privacy, and the lack of tea / coffee-making things in the room is rather irritating – but, again, those are minor complaints. To wring maximum pleasure, watch Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, shot partly on location here in pre-revamp 1955. If you don’t stay, buy a day pass, which for €150 (Dh738) buys lunch, a massage in the spa and the use of a sun-lounger by the beautiful pool. Among the hotel’s shops (besides Dior) are Akbar Delights for those exquisite embellished kaftans and Desert d’ Orient for the most exquisite handmade bags you’ll find in the city, including a silver fringed and beaded clutch for Mad8,500 (Dh3,730; www.juliastyle.com, 00 212 5 2240 4201). Rooms from Mad18,000 (Dh7,907) per night at Royal Mansour (www.royalmansour.ma, 00 212 5 2980 8080) and 600 euros (Dh2,955) at La Mamounia per night, including tax (www.mamounia.com, 00 212 5 2438 8682).
Where to eat
Unexpectedly good (and inevitably expensive) French food at Le Grand Café de la Poste in Ville Nouvelle (00 212 5 2443 3038) – everything from the Caesar salad through to entrecôte steak and divine chocolate fondant – makes this a logical place for coffee, which segues nicely into lunch – allow about Mad335 (Dh147) a head – while the new town shops are closed. Still, given the lavish breakfasts at the hotels, you won’t want to eat too much at lunch. Dinner in Marrakech is invariably a feast, even if you take care to avoid those tourist-oriented places with dancing and musicians that send you waddling away from the traditional five-heavy courses.Eating à la carte is much wiser. It’s understandable that the riad hotels have taken so much business from the city’s grandest hotels, given the prices at these. But if you want to see the city at its most splendidly exotic, you have to eat amid the curtained, lamplit splendour of La Mamounia’s Moroccan restaurant (00 212 5 2438 8600) and, for the ultimate dining experience in the country, at the Royal la Grande Table Française at the Royal Mansour (00 212 5 2980 8080). Here, fabulous Moroccan-French fusion dishes are served amid a head-turning setting of immense swishy curtains, mosaics, fountains, mounds of red roses and attentive staff. The great Alléno supervises here, and the amuse-bouche and canapés his chefs send out are simply sublime. Leave space for pudding: salted caramel, double-chocolate ... raisin-stuffed mouthfuls of fantasy. Main courses at around Mad650 (Dh285) and up – and utterly worth it.
What to read
Marrakesh by Design by Maryam Montague, the author of the blog My Marrakesh. “In a world of beige interiors, Morocco seems the perfect antidote,” says Montague in her YouTube video, shaking out one of the gold-sequinned vintage Moroccan wedding blankets she sells for US$695 (Dh2,550) via www.redthreadsouk.com.
Shopping guides
First-time visitors, especially, will appreciate the help of Moulay Youssif Elalaoui (lesnomades@hotmail.com; 00 212 661 1635 64) or Mohamed Ali Elazkem (usalisland@yahoo.com; 00 212 661 18 12 72). Both have worked extensively with interior and fashion designers.
PS: This is a city you discover on foot. Flat shoes are essential.
